Apple’s App Store Reaches 25 Billion Global Downloads

Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China initiated the download — the free version of the “Where’s My Water?” puzzle game — and won a $10,000 iTunes card for his history-making click.

In a press release, Apple senior vice president Eddie Cue said, “When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users.”

Indeed, app download numbers are soaring. Apple’s nearly doubled its numbers since early July when the App Store hit the 15 billion download mark (to put this in perspective, Google’s Android Market passed 10 billion app downloads in early December). All its success notwithstanding, Apple recently acquired app search startup Chomp, which should help make navigating through and discovering new apps in the App Store more streamlined and effective.

In addition to announcing its 25th billion download, Apple reported Monday that there are 550,000 total apps in the App Store, 170,000 of which are optimized for the iPad. What’s more, there are now more than 315 million iOS devices across the globe. We’ll no doubt hear these figures, or perhaps slightly updated numbers, at Apple’s upcoming media event on Wednesday.